Marriage Minutes: Financial Stability Better Than Sexy; Childhood Obesity Linked to DivorceA wrap-up of recent news items that show financial stability is an attractive attribute in a spouse, couples sleep better when wives are happy and more. BY HITCHED EDITORS

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A new survey shows that financial stability is an extremely desirable trait, even more so than someone who is attractive.

“ The sleep of married couples is more in sync on a minute-by-minute basis than the sleep of random individuals.”

The following is a round-up of news items compiled by the Hitched editors for the week of June 9, 2014.

Study: Financial Responsibility Beats Sexy

Before you married your spouse, what was the one thing more important than anything else to you in that person? According to a new survey conducted by Experian Consumer Services, married adults valued financial responsibility—96%—more than physical attractiveness in a spouse. In fact, the study reveals that married adults rank financial compatibility higher than sex and intimacy (95%), career goals (77%), religion and spirituality (69%), and politics (44%).

"Survey findings show that once someone identifies a compatible partner, his or her next thought is about how that person manages personal finances, and credit plays a key role in that scenario," says Ken Chaplin, senior vice president at Experian Consumer Services. "This holds true for both genders, and the study further shows that working toward compatible financial goals matters to the vast majority of married adults."

Sleep of Married Couples Syncs Better When Wife is Happy

Most sleep research has been done on individual sleeping habits. New research published in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine took a look at the patterns of couples and found that roughly 75% of couples who slept in the same bed were awake and fell asleep at the same time. The study found that married couples are more in sync with their sleeping cycles than their study of random individuals. More interesting, when the wife reported higher marital satisfaction, the couple's sleeping habits synced even more frequently.

"How couples sleep together may influence and be influenced by their relationship functioning," says lead author Heather Gunn, PhD, postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. "The sleep of married couples is more in sync on a minute-by-minute basis than the sleep of random individuals. This suggests that our sleep patterns are regulated not only by when we sleep, but also by with whom we sleep."

Study: Child Obesity Linked to Divorce

Researchers from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health studied health data from school nurses on more than 1,000 third grade kids (roughly 8 years old) at 127 different schools. They found that boys and girls whose parents were divorced were 50% more likely to obese and almost 90% more likely to be abdominally obese, a waist circumference that is at least half their height, than those whose parents were married. When the boys were parsed from the data their numbers looked more bleak. Boys were 63% more likely to be generally overweight than boys with married parents; and were 104% more likely to be abdominally obese.
The reasons for this are not concrete, but the researchers hypothesize that socioeconomic factors play a role, since other research has shown that divorced parents, and in particular mothers, are worse off financially than their married counterparts; and poverty in developed countries has been linked with obesity.

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1 Million Couples Can't Be Wrong
Over 1 million couples turn to Hitched for expert marital advice every year. Sign up now for our newsletter & get exclusive weekly content that will entertain, educate and inspire your marriage.